Back in the fifth grade, close to a quarter-century ago, my class learned about the Responsibility of Parenthood by carting around egg babies for a couple of weeks.

The numbers declined slowly but steadily. Eggs were dropped, or sat upon, or mislaid. There were some particularly dramatic losses on the playground, and a few (failed) attempts to fool the teacher with unsanctioned replacements.

In short, a bunch of ten-year-old kids did pretty much what you'd expect them to do.

Well, most of them.

I'd been wondering, recently, how accurate my memory was of that time; if I'd actually taken the exercise as super, super seriously as I remembered. Had I really hand-sewn outfits? And converted an old toolbox into a plush, fully decorated mobile nursery? And started up a mini cloth diaper laundry operation at my desk?

Egg babies in their vintage duds. (click on image to enlarge)

Then I found these--still dusted with baby powder--and doubted no more.

(As an aside, it turns out that a foolproof parenting strategy for getting your kids safely into adulthood is to tuck them away, untouched, in a dark attic for 20+ years.)